Okay rain, you win

All along during this 30-day stretch of rain, I have been saying that I don't mind it. It keeps me focused, I don't feel like a kid trapped inside on a sunny day, and there's a certain amount of coziness to it. Today, however, I have had enough. It's not that I don't like the rain. In fact, I still love it. It's just that right now it is threatening to swallow me. I'm one Law and Order marathon away from not even getting out of bed anymore. I can justify this in the wintertime, what with SAD and bad driving conditions and the fact that nature encourages hibernation. But I need a kick in the pants right now and the rain is not doing it.

Mostly it just makes me so tired. After a weekend away I was hoping to have a productive catch-up day and instead, I have accomplished little more than an hour and a half of writing and a hot bath. Could I really have the winter blues at the end of June?

I attempted to go for a walk when the skies seemed clear enough, only to be poured down on 15 minutes into it. I would have stayed out---I love walking in the rain---but I worried that my iPod would get damaged and that would ruin my life. (I love my iPod. It's my rock.) Sometimes when it rains, especially when it rains hard, I just want to lie down on the ground and let it cover me; let the hard pelting water strike my face in heavy drops, let my hair go limp, let it soak through my clothes. During difficult times I often stay out in the rain just a little longer than I need to, my face lifted up to it, just so I can feel something else.

Today though, I'm hoping it's tiredness disguising itself as sadness. After a weekend away and a stretch of late nights and early mornings that started the night of Michael's death, I'm feeling a tired fog descend. The grayness, of course, never helps.

After a wedding in CT on Saturday, Dan and I made our way up to RI for a visit with the fam and then home last night. The last hour of the trip, as we drove from a dry Massachusetts into a rainy New Hampshire, I rested my tired head on Dan's shoulder and closed my eyes. Dan once told me that before we met, when he would travel to CT to visit his family for holidays, he was always envious during the trip back home to NH of the couples whom were riding together in one car, back to shared lives and homes. A solo driver himself, he would feel lonely. So I always feel a bit of this-is-what-I-bring-to-this-marriage, when he leans his head down to meet mine as we drive.

When we got back to the apartment though, after 48 hours with each other and family and after lots of driving, we both needed a minute to ourselves. I went on the computer (read this depressing article)and headed to the bath. (Yeah, that's two baths in less than 24 hours...I'm telling you, this rain is going to have me taking my meals in bed soon.) Dan put on the Yankees game and then opted to play a video game. When I heard the clicking and maneuvering of the XBOX controller I must admit I was, at first, annoyed. (Even though I enjoy video games---and can beat Dan's ass at Simpson's Road Rage---I still have a hard time with his being a gamer, however rarely he plays. It defies logic since, again, I would beat up a kid to get first dibs at the Pac-Man machine, but I think that maybe women are hardwired for irritation when their partners play video games.) Anyway, I didn't express my annoyance which is progress. (If progress means passive aggressively mentioning it a blog entry instead of having a confrontation.)

Then, when I was in the bath, I heard Dan's footsteps outside the door and again experienced aggravation, thinking that I was going to be disrupted. When I realized he was putting the laundry away and not bothering me (or bothering with me) in any way, I felt like an ass. This low threshold for irritation is sometimes how I know when I need to take some me time. And I'm honest about it and Dan almost gets it. I require more alone time than he does (maybe even more alone time than most people) but without it, I'm exceedingly unpleasant and if Dan doesn't quite understand my need for quiet time, he certainly understands that. Still, he is not entirely guilt-free when it comes to cutting into this time like an attention-starved kid.

But last night, it was all me. I'm grumpy and tired and this close to being a fist-pounding, tantruming child. If I don't get a full eight hours tonight (or at least seven, maybe six) then we're in the danger zone. And if the sun doesn't shine for at least 10 minutes tomorrow---I'm talking solid warmth through closed eyelids---then I'm going to put some time in with the guy upstairs...Jerry Orbach, of course.

Michael

Recently, someone asked me to try to remember the girl I was at 12---to get in touch with that time. In order to do that---and I really wanted to put the effort in---I started listening to Jackson 5 songs, the soundtrack of those years for me. I can remember vacationing in Florida with my family in seventh grade and how I barely took off my Walkman the entire trip, flipping my Jackson 5 tape from side A to B and B to A, over and over and over again.

When I hear those songs now---specifically Michael's voice---I remember the longing that I felt while listening to it. It wasn't the fun and dancing of ABC that got to me, but the melancholy of Never Can Say Goodbye and I Wanna Be Where You Are and Maybe Tomorrow. I listened to that boy, that soulfulness---to me, the very definition of true soulfulness in music---and felt tortured that I could not know him; that I could not be his friend; that I could not love him. I couldn't stand that there was a boy my age that could ever feel like that and now he was a man and I had missed my chance. He sang how I felt. To hear a young voice---not a crooner or Broadway songstress---sing so achingly, made me feel understood if only when my headphones were over my ears.

So, in the years that followed, I did what I do: I obsessed. I bought as much of his music as I could, I hung his posters on my walls, I read biographies about him, I carved the words "Michael Jackson" above "Thriller" on the stool I made in Wood Tech. (This stool has moved with me to every apartment I have ever lived in and I use it daily.) I learned about his eccentricities (then, it was just the stuff of hyperbaric chambers and Elephant Man bones) and about his lost childhood. I read about the abuse he endured from his father and how he hated his face. And when people spoke of his strangeness, I thought about how much sense he made, this sad Peter Pan. Of course he was broken. But I would listen to Man in the Mirror or Heal the World or Will you be there and understand how he tried to make sense of it himself; how he tried to unbreak or dreamed of being unbroken. I would listen to those songs and hear that soulful boy. And in his music, if only for the duration of a five minute song, I am sometimes able to sense that longing, hopeful girl.

So through the plastic surgery and skin lightening and sham marriages and baby danglings, I forgave him. With the molestation, I chose a different route: denial. I was 12 when the accusations started piling up. Then, I honestly thought that this man child was just not a sexual being and his motives for surrounding himself with children, misinterpreted. I'm not sure what I believe now. (Even Holden Caulfield, another boy whom I was tortured not to know, ended up an old man who preyed on the innocence of young girls---at least as I read it.) As an adult I understand that even Peter Pan gets boners and that repressed sexuality never ends well. Still, the extent of MJ's fame and wealth opens him up to exploitation and that's always been enough of a plausible scenario for me to hang on to him.

Which is why, when he announced earlier this year that he would be doing a limited number of farewell performances in London, I felt that I had to go. Tickets went on sale at 7am in London so I had to set my alarm to get in the cyber-line at 3am our time. The next day, huge crashes of the Ticketmaster website were reported, leaving thousands of people ticketless after hours of waiting at their computers. My tickets were bought and paid for only 20 minutes after they went on sale. It was meant to be. It was written. I would see Michael Jackson before I died. (No thought was given to his dying.) To cross this off my life's to-do list would not only be a thrill for me as an adult, but it would also be an act of honoring dreams born from a child. I think it's important to do that once in a while.

So a London trip was planned around this concert. And then there were rumors of cancer. And then shows were canceled and a nagging fear that the concert would not be, was rising in my chest. But when Dan called me and told me that Michael Jackson had suffered a cardiac arrest I didn't give it much thought. At this point, I have a pretty high boiling point when it comes to Michael Jackson scandal. He was ill again, I thought, and just moved on.

An hour later I was driving home, the convertible top down, enjoying the first sun I'd seen in weeks. A Jackson 5 song came on and, having totally forgotten the quick conversation regarding Michael's cardiac arrest (indicating the extent to which I thought it was just another headline), I instead thought of the assignment I had been given to get in touch with that 12-year old girl. So I listened and felt the sun on my face and the cooling evening air and I thought about that innocent yearning and Michael Jackson's haunting voice. Before I made it home, Dan called to tell me that reports were coming in saying he was dead. During this phone call with Dan, another friend beeped in and yet another texted me. Now I knew something was going on. When I got home, I sat in my car unable for a minute, to even move. For that minute I felt the deep throb of sadness. Inside, I saw the words "Michael Jackson dead at 50" on the television. I sat down on the floor in front of the screen and watched.

There were still some unknowns then and I was convinced it was a hoax. A publicity stunt. Dan and I talked about how if anybody was going to fake his death it would be Michael Jackson. The hospital hadn't commented yet. This wasn't real. Dan and I went out to dinner, our first chance to sit outside at our favorite local spot. Dan made a toast to Michael Jackson and I thought it was so strange---the night, his toast. I ate a poached pear salad and a cup of chowder and felt uncomfortably full. I couldn't finish my glass of wine. I looked at the sky and heard the birds and thought, "Is this really the night of Michael Jackson's death? No, that's too big a thing for this night."

We got home and the news crews were still "waiting for comment." I did a yoga video and held lunges longer than I normally would have and liked the pain. I reached and pushed for physical strength. "I need to move," I said to Dan.

If you had told me that after hearing about Michael Jackson's death I would go out for dinner and do a yoga video, I would have thought otherwise. It still doesn't really feel like how I spent the night. I got out of the shower and saw Jermaine Jackson explaining the details of his brother's death and only then did I know it was true.

Now, I am numb. I have been watching hours of news coverage and video clips and celebrity call-ins to Larry King. I have been listening to my iPod. It is almost 3 in the morning and I don't want to go to bed without feeling this but my thinking mind tends to shut down the feeling sometimes.

So many friends and loved ones called or wrote or texted and that's been the most real part of this. I thought I was crazy for feeling so affected but the concern from everyone felt validating, if not bizarre. I did really love him, the notes confirmed it. Like it was a relative or something, they apologized for my loss. I never knew him. I believe that you can feel connected to an artist, that you can even grieve such a loss, but I don't know that this is that.

I just received a text that one of my oldest friends gave birth to a little girl tonight. And, like that, perspective shifts. Real.

Real is not what I am watching on TV right now. I need to turn it off. Real is what I felt listening to my Walkman lagging behind everyone else on my family vacation.

Still, I wonder what that concert would have been like and I am deeply saddened that I will never know.

My friend Liz.

If you have 19 minutes to spare and are into creativity or a funny blond chick or making the most of life, this is so worth your time. Make some Cup O' Noodles, sit back, and enjoy.

When did summer stop feeling like this?

I'm stealing a few minutes here while "watching" four little girls play inside on a rainy day. (I could be cut off at any moment if someone gets hungry or hurt or left out or just starved for a little adult attention.) It's actually pretty fantastic, listening to each of their imaginations go wild. They started off outside and only came in when it started pouring. When it was just drizzling I called out to them, "You guys wanna come in, or are you going to tough it out?"

Four high-pitched voices called back to me, "Tough it out!"

Inside, I had an assembly line of sandwich-making operating at full speed for when they finally came in for lunch. They ran in, dropped their shoes at the door, nibbled a bit and went on their way. Not a sandwich was finished. I expected as much after the two little girls from next door came to join the two I was already watching (Molly and a pal) armed with a box of Yodels. The oldest one---a third grader whom, with the exception of her little sister, they all adore---doled out the treats and even asked me if I wanted some which I thought was especially sweet. Sometimes I think these kids don't know where I fit---I'm not quite the adult that their parents are, but I'm not a kid either. I figure as long as they keep offering me Yodels, I'm where I want to be. (And by the way, is there any better admittance pass to an impromptu neighborhood swingset hoedown than a box of Yodels? I think I'm going to bring Yodels to my next dinner party.)

The group has now moved into Molly's bedroom---a palace for any little girl. Her room is the largest in the house and, as this was a strategic move in order to keep most toys upstairs and out of the way, it is kiddie heaven. In one corner sits a wooden playhouse---large enough to hold all four girls plus babies in cribs and bassinets and all their diapers and bottles. My sister even put a little lamp in there that gets turned off when it's time for the Cabbage Patch Kids to get some rest. In another corner there's a toy kitchen stocked with tiny boxes of food, plastic fruits and vegetables and plates and utensils. Everywhere else there are shelves of stuffed animals and instruments, chests of dress-up clothes and makeup and ornate little boxes filled with baubles and jewels---some fake, some handed down from Molly’s mommy and aunties.

As I write I’m catching sight of each little girl scampering by my doorway, decked out in my sister’s old 80’s prom dresses. (One time---for the amusement of the kids and my sister---I donned one of these gowns and started playing out in the yard.) There is a massive hours-long game of “house” going on. Nobody wants to be the boy, everybody wants to be the teenager and every now and then I hear them giggling and saying, “Who farted?” which, of course, warrants a “whoever smelled it dealt it.” (It took everything in me not to yell from the next bedroom where I’ve stationed myself in order to be in earshot, “Whoever made up the rhyme committed the crime!”)

And, like that, my window is gone. The two little girls from next door went home and my original two are, of course, hungry. I have them cleaning up which should buy me a few more minutes.

School has only been out a couple of days but already I can feel these kids slipping seamlessly into that magic that is summer break. Day after day for the next two months their entire existence will be dedicated to having as much fun as possible. Caught up in all of life’s crap, I had forgotten that fantastic rush of freedom. Sometimes kids remind you of that stuff.

One last anecdote:

This morning in the car Molly’s friend said, “My grandpa’s in the hospital. He has diabetes and cancer. I went to visit him and gave him a hug.”

A silence sat in the car for just a minute and then Molly asked, “Did he smell weird?”

I love kids.

Of course, it should be noted that these are my thoughts after two days of summer vacation. Talk to me in August.

Whatever you do, don't ever say Lombasso Karaunch.

My dad could never listen to this song without weeping. Sometimes we would put it on just to tease him. Just to see his face redden and his eyes well up. He'd bury his face in his hands. Sometimes he'd even leave the room.

"Daaaad," we'd say, laughing. "It's just a song."

On a walk the other day this song came up on my iPod and there I was, crying myself, thinking of my dad and what it must have been like for him to be a father to five girls; what it must have felt like. To me, it was his title, his job description---dad to me and my sisters. Still, I never thought he was just my father. Where my mom was always my mom (and only now do I get that she was someone else, too), I knew my dad was someone outside of fatherhood. He'd had a life before us and has had one since raising us, too. By the time I was 18, I figured he was tired of the job and who could blame him? At that point he'd been a father for 27 years already. 27 years of girls becoming women would tire anybody out.

But, you know what? I think he loved it. I think he loved having a house full of laughing, dancing, (often fighting) girls. That's why I cried that day, alone in the woods listening to that song. For the first time I thought about what he must have felt listening to it; how he must have known the window of that type of fathering---the sweet time of fathering little girls in nightgowns--- was small and that eventually he would have to see us off. I never realized he looked at fatherhood that way. I never knew that was why he cried.

I love that I have a dad who can cry. He'll tell me even now that crying is good. That it means you feel and love and hurt. That you have to let it out. I don't always heed all of his advice (this last bit in particular) but I know he's right (about this part, not always everything else...sorry Dad) but I feel fortunate to have a dad who knows the value of a good cry.

He taught me how to think. He taught me to debate. To question authority (except his, of course). To resist herd mentality. In every fight I've ever faced---including those with him---I've used the tools with which he armed me. He taught me to fight with my brain (which is not to say I'm not a crazy spaz during a fight---thanks mom).

People throw this line around a lot, but for me it's a simple truth: My father was not like other fathers. I wrote a paper about him once in a creative writing class where I described how he's tap danced, rollerskated, made wood carvings and wreathes and clay figures, sold hand-painted sweatshirts, loves guns and roses, cooked his own Chinese food, is an excellent cartoonist and a member of the NRA, taught yoga before everyone was doing it, and, oh yeah, is an emergency room doctor. My professor told me that she had been reading along figuring my dad was this hippie artist and then was shocked to get to the ER doctor part.

Sometimes I'm shocked to get to the ER doctor part. My dad is definitely shocked to get to the ER doctor part. He told me that he was always uncomfortable when people asked "What do you do?" (I hate this question and am only just realizing this is rooted in my dad's teachings.)

"I draw, I camp, I garden," he would tell me. "That's what I do."

He's a good doctor. I know this. But it never defined him and I know he would say that the job was entirely too adult for his liking. At his job, people died. I remember him being really depressed one day and my mom explaining to me that a child had died at the hospital the night before. He has known illness and death closely for over 40 years and I still don't think I fully understand how that has affected him. I'm not sure that he knows either.

At the very least (or, perhaps, the most), it has given him perspective. He has seen people fade from life to death. He knows you have to get as much living in as you can. When I'm struggling with a decision ("Dad, should I really go to London?")he'll offer up his standard line: "If you're trying to decide something, always go with the option that is the most fun." Pretty solid stuff there.

Writing about my dad is never easy. I've never felt I've gotten it down, who he is. He's rich in character and strengths and flaws and is beyond what I've been able to manage with words. There is no Hallmark card that fits. There is, however, this awkward, schlocky, honest blog. Happy Father's Day, Dad. I love you.

Random Chunks of Spew

***I know I mentioned this on Facebook, but has anyone watched the new A&E show "Obsessed"? I had so been looking forward to it as I am always fascinated by human behavior and feel that OCD has been really misrepresented with only the stereotypical compulsive aspects of the disorder being depicted, but...this doesn't feel good to watch. It feels exploitive. The first episode predictably featured the obsessively clean man whose home is spotless (and rugless) and who throws every bit of trash into and outside receptacle. The treatment in most cases (on the show) is exposure to the anxiety-producing agent. On this particular episode, the guy's therapist, "Dr. Shana", asks to use the gentleman's bathroom (as the session is in his home) in order to change and dispose of her tampon. It was part of the treatment but it didn't sit right. First of all, the guy was gay and lived alone. Is exposure to used tampons something that he really is going to encounter in his daily life? Second of all, ew.

(It should also be noted that while Dan and I were watching and saw this guy's completely sanitized bathroom, Dan asked me, "Is that your dream?" My response: "Totally." I'll save for a later post my wisdom on how to properly clean a bathroom and why Dan is so lucky to have me to teach him this while he is cleaning the bathroom.)

The show was hyped as being from the people who brought us that shiny jewel of a program called "Intervention" but it is not even in the same league. If "Intervention" is pure heroin, "Obsessed" is shwag.

***If you like your mental illness with a side of song and dance, you need to buy the soundtrack of Broadway musical "Next to Normal." Usually when I listen to a new soundtrack, I play it nonstop for a few months until I know every word. (I've been rapping a la "In the Heights" for over a year now.) But with "Next to Normal," the music and story is so unsettling that I've actually had to make myself take breaks from it to protect my energy and keep from going to the dark side. I have never had this experience with anything else I have ever heard. How often can you say that? The story of a bipolar mother and her family as they struggle with her illness and treatment is so painful and so compelling; the music, positively haunting. (If you do get it or have, gasp, seen the show, talk to me about it! I'm dying to talk to somebody about it.)

***I'm not really sure I know how to use semicolons properly but to quote someone I heard recently---I thought it was Elizabeth Gilbert (whom I so enjoy) but now I'm thinking it wasn't and that it was an Oprah guest---this is my "one fabulous life" and I'll be damned if I'm too fearful to use a semicolon. (I'm pretty sure punctuation is not what Liz---if we were friends, she'd want me to call her Liz---or whomever had in mind when she said it but there it is.) However, one of my most loyal (and favorite) readers is an English teacher, so I can't help but get a little RPA (Red Pen Anxiety) while writing. V-dawg, perhaps you would consider a future guest spot as our on-site grammar counselor?

***Everybody is complaining about the rain. I'm not (at least right this moment). I'm in boxer shorts and a babushka (also, a shirt) and am happy to have no guilt about staying inside and writing/cleaning/facebooking. Pretty soon I'm going to take a bath and read my book (no Molly today)---you can't do something like that on a sunny day. As an ADD kid whose gig involves sitting for long periods in front of a computer or pad of paper, rainy days keep me focused. On sunny days I get so excited that I'm like a horny bumblebee, buzzing from thing to thing.

*** I need someone (preferably a woman) to see Pixar's "Up" and tell me if you spent the first 15 minutes of the movie bawling, as I did. I'm trying to gage whether it was PMS, fatigue, or just a genuine emotional reaction. The movie was great, of course, but it peaked during those first 15 minutes (the musical montage for those who have seen it). In fact, after that I was sort of annoyed with all the talking dogs and adventure crap until I remembered that it was a kid movie and if I wanted a crier I could go watch Terms of Endearment for the 536th time.

***Has anyone noticed Garrett Morris on the new Nintendo commercial? I hope he got paid 100,000 points for that job.

***You wanna know what hell is? Hell is eating a water chestnut wrapped in bacon right out of the oven and suffering second-degree burns on the roof of your mouth. (I don't think they're really second-degree burns but on the oh-fuck-ometer, the experience was up there.) Then, as the burns blistered and bubbled (and not quite satisfied with the amount of saturated fat the bacon provided), I decided to enjoy the marshmallowy goodness of a rice krispy treat which served to puncture and scratch open my wounds. I sustained this injury about a week ago and am still trying to maintain a smoothie and yogurt diet in order to let it heal. The lesson: Try harder not to be a total dumbass.

***I've been watching a lot of documentaries about bears lately and was feeling relatively prepared for a potential run-in until I heard this tidbit: Though it's widely accepted that one should play dead during a bear encounter in order to appear nonthreatening, apparently this only serves you if you think the bear's attack is defensive in nature. If it is offensive in nature, (i.e., he's got a hankering for the unrivaled delight of human scalp) you are supposed to fight back using every means necessary. (Indian sunburn?) The part that so concerned me was that we are supposed to discern---in the 5 seconds before the bear attacks and with all the levelheadedness that being attacked by a bear provides---whether or not it's a defensive or offensive attack. Maybe I'll ask him what his sign is while I'm at it. Maybe I'll ask him if he'd like fries with that.

I feel wholly unprepared now...Perhaps, I'll meld the two options and act like an aggressive zombie. Dan's response when I asked him what to do when he sees a bear: "Grab its baby and run?")

***That's all for now. Off to enjoy a Pad Thai smoothie.

Joe Lantana has seen better days.

Once upon a time Joe was inside and he was happy. He had lots of green leaves and was growing so big that Dan would knock into the branches every time he walked by him. (Often this would prompt me to yell, "Careful! You hit Joe!" and Dan said he felt like he was the victor in a long-fought fight when Joe was finally moved outside.)

Joe is not doing so well now. (Dan is fine.) After enduring heavy wind and rain, I had to take my pruning shears out (holla atcha Felco pruners) and trim many of his newest, most brittle (and now broken) shoots. The next day, after a full day of sun, more branches were lost due to Joe's drying out.

I knew it was going to be an adjustment but I never thought it would be this hard. I look out the window every day at him and just hope that I made the right decision and didn't push him out of the house before he was ready. I have a healthy Geranium who I'm supposed to put out there next and I'm just not sure I'm ready after this experience.

Umm, did I just give a shoutout to my pruners?

There's hope yet...